Last year around this time, we released the new VCDX Directory and also published guidelines for panelists and mentors. Since then, anyone who was a panelist was not able to also be a mentor to aspiring VCDX candidates. As the program evolves and we move into 2016, we’ve decided to go through and update the VCDX Directory with a “Retired Panelist” flag on the back end, which will re-enable the “mentor” checkbox in the self-service administration screen. We will still be able to keep track of people who were once panelists and the mentor guidelines still always apply to anyone that volunteers to be a mentor and help others.
There are many changes coming for 2016 (a few have already been announced) and this is one more. We feel it’s a great way to add more mentors to the pool, while we still grow the current panelists pool. When deciding who will be marked as a “Retired Panelist”, we will evaluate a few things such as when they last served as a panelist, how long they served as a panelist, etc. This should open up quite a few people to the mentor side of things.
We should be able to notify these people once the change is made on their account and hopefully we will see more people answer the call of VCDX Mentor. Please stay tuned as we comb through the data and do the updates in the weeks to come!
